The development of cloud storage and services has allowed users to offload both storage of their data and associated computations on that data. As a result, businesses can choose to forego the expensive proposition of maintaining their own data centers, relying instead on cloud storage and computational services.
One type of data amenable to cloud storage and computational services is genomic data. The field of genomics involves analyzing the function and structure of genomes. This includes DNA sequencing and genetic mapping, as well as the study of interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. Human genomic data can be mined to identify variants in genes that can contribute to diseases. However, a large and diverse genomic data set is needed to identify these genetic links. To this end large databases of genomic data are being established.